[Iyf-ct] IWW in South Africa

[Andreas Spath]

Sounds great Mandy!

A

--- On Fri, 1/15/10, Mandy Moussouris <mandymoussouris at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Mandy Moussouris <mandymoussouris at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Iyf-ct] IWW in South Africa
To: davekloker at yahoo.com
Cc: "In your face" <iyf-ct at lists.resist.ca>
Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 10:12 AM




Hi,

 

Thanks for getting back. Pitty we did not know you were here would have been nice to meet and chat - hope you had a good stay in CT although July is not the best time weather wise.

 

At the moment we would not be in a position to start job site organising, we think this would develop as things got going. Our group, called In Your Face (IYF) is a mixture of Anarchist and autonomists, it started last year when I moved to Cape Town with an anti Election campaign entitled NOPE, with the slogan 'our dreams don't fit on your ballots' and has moved on to running a really really free market every month and plans to start basic economics training and run seminars and film screenings. I am a supporter of Zabalaza, a South African Anarchist group and before that was part of Bekisha Media Cooperative with Nicole Ulrich, Lucien Van der Walt and Michael Smidt and we all met comrades from IWW when we went to the May 2000 CNT Pour un Autre Futur Rallye in Paris. I have also worked in the union movement, specificaly with COSATU in various capacities (mostly Training and research) since 1993 - although do not any more, so I do have some skills
 which can provide support.

 

Our group is made up primarily of workers in NGO's and some unemployed people but we would very much like to belong to a union. In the past I have both worked for and been a member of COSATU but as you know COSATU is very much a Nationalist union particularly since 1994 with its alliance with the ANC and SACP, it has also, lost a lot of its working class focus and shopfloor strenghth, choosing to follow a more corpratist model of unionism. These are issues with us and the main reason why we would not like to join COSATU. IYF tasked me to look into the possiblity of getting an IWW Chapter set up here and we would need to discuss this in our group a bit more but the idea of starting an IWW here comes, firstly from my belief in the model and principles of IWW, which my comrades share. We also think that our really really free markets would be a good place to begin recruitment campaigns. Our group is small at the moment and getting things going would take
 a lot of work, so recruiting, we think would be an important innitial step to build numbers and thus capacity.

 

In terms of what we would like to accomplish, we would like, for ourselves andother workers, to have a union that supports and provides space for libeterian thought and practice, one which is not linked to any politial party, one that REALLY challenges the Capitalist State and Capital but first and foremost one that organises, supports and empowers workers to engage with the problems and challenges they face on a daily basis in their workplace and their lives. This is the aspect which will require, at least innitially a lot of time and support in terms of training and providing knowledge of labour laws etc.

 

Sorry if this is a bit broad, vague, verbose and structureless. I think from here I would need to sit down and have a proper conversation, so that we can develop a more formal plan and idea. anyway hope this helps.

 

Yours in struggle

Mandy

 







 
> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:59:39 -0800
> From: davekloker at yahoo.com
> Subject: IWW in South Africa
> To: mandymoussouris at hotmail.com
> CC: jkrpaniww at yahoo.com
> 
> Greetings,
> I am the chair of the International Solidarity Comission of the IWW. I am very excited about the prospect of an IWW chapter in Cape Town, particularly because I was just there this past July. I would love some more information as a next step in starting a branch. Are you doing any job site organizing? What drew you to the IWW? What would you like to accomplish with a branch in Cape Town? I look forward to hearing from you.
> Regards,
> Kloker, San Francisco Bay Area General Membership Branch, United States
> “Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business.” Alix Spiegel
> 
> 
> 
 		 	   		  
Windows 7: Simplify what you do everyday. Find the right PC for you. 

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